Who listens?
Who speaks?
And can you return?
The blurt of your mouth
the trace that is gone
[For full chapter, click
here"Let whoever is first to fight the Amorites be chieftain," the elders of Gilead promise, scrambling for leadership. The cliffhanger ending of the previous chapter, where God's response is left uncertain, is resolved here, as we discover the existence of Jephtha, a "great warrior" who is a son of Gilead. Salvation is at hand.
Yet the chapter is dense with intertextual allusions, setting up a complex movement between hope and dread. Gilead searches for a leader, any leader, but it is unclear what kind of leader they have found. Jephtha's introduction is replete with parallels to the story of Abimelekh. Like Abimelkh, Gideon is a disenfranchised bastard. Like Abimelekh, his position is defined by his mother: the opening verses are full of references to women "a prostitute woman" "the wife of Gilead" "you are the son of an alien woman". Like Abimelekh, Jepthah leaves his father's home, and his brothers. Is Jephtha to be another faithless, murderous tyrant?
Yet in contrast to Abimelekh's active rejection of his father in favor of his mother's kin, Jephthat's break with his fatheris not a matter of choice. He is forced "to flee," and camps in the outer periphery until the elders of Gilead come to fetch him, like a discarded shoe. "For you have hated me, and banished me from my father's house, why do you come to me now when you are troubled (tz'a'r צר)?" he erupts, defining himself as a rejected exile who still sees himself as linked to his lost family home.
This loaded accusation parallels two other pain-filled verses, which set into place the thematic matrix of this dense chapter. First, it is a direct syntactic echo of God's own accusation to Israel in the previous chapter: "For you have left me... let the gods you have chosen save you in your time of trouble (tz'a'r צר)." "That is why we have come to return you" the elders of Gilead respond, using the loaded term that also denotes "repentance." This parallel highlights that Israel are mercenary in their appeals to both God and Jephtha; they are using God and man for their own safety, oblivious to the hurt and wrong they have done. Jephtha seems aware that he is aligned with God's role: "God will listen between us" he says, demanding a deeper loyalty. He then takes on God's role in recounting the history of the covenant. In highlighting the role of the divine in salvation, Jephtha links himself to the Father--to Gideon rather than Abimelekh. Like Gideon, he insists that salvation is found not in might, but in divine intervention.
Jephtha's pain-filled cry also directly echoes Isaac's cry to a different Abimelekh, back in the nation's prehistory, in
Genesis 26: 27: "
Why have you come to me, and you hated me, and sent me away?" This cry introduces the first human covenant in history, as Isaac and Abimelekh king of Grar "
swear" to do no harm to each other, a covenant tied into place by "
the blessing of God."
And indeed, Jephtha is obsessed with the question of vows and human faithfulness. How can language be made binding? The
leitwords of this chapter are
d'v'r דבר, speech,
sh'v, return, repentance,
sh'm'a, to listen. Jephath "
speaks" (דבר) his "
speech" (d'v'r) "
before God," trying to give it reality. His first act of war is to send the "
speech (
d'v;r) of Jephtha" to the King of Amon, fighting with words before he fights with weapons. If Israel, in the
previous chapter. had lost their connection Moses and to Joshua, Jephtha here attempts to recreate it by focusing specifically on the power of Moses' words, on the messages that he sent. Yet these efforts are alas, in vain. Just as the kings did not listen to Moses, the king of Amon does not "
listen" to Jephtha's words. In the end, it is physical battle rather than words that matter.
Or is it?
There is a dark side to the attempt to make human language binding. "T
he first thing that comes out to greet me when I return (sh'v) in peace I will dedicate to God," Jephtha swears. It is his daughter who comes to greet him, "
with timbrel and dance", echoing Miriam's
primordial timbrel and circle dance in the aftermath of the splitting of the sea. "
You have destroyed me," Jephtha accuses his daughter. "
I opened my mouth to God and cannot return" (sh'u'v).
Perhaps rather than seeking to reify language and make it binding, Jephtha would have been better served by turning to
women's speech, and connecting to his rejected mother. "
This is the word (d'v'r
) that God has commanded: if a man makes a vow... he must carry out all that crossed his lip.. if a woman makes a vow... and her father restrains her... none of her vows shall stand, and God will forgive her." The laws of vows are introduced by making women's vows dependent on relationships--be they with father's or husbands. Here, Jephtha's commitment to the blurting of his mouth overpowers the relationship to his daughter, and undoes the promise of redemptive
return that lurks beneath the surface of this chapter.
The redemptive dance and song that could have connected to
Deborah's own recreation of the Song of the Sea, turn instead to a dirge, as the "
maidens of Israel go every year, for four days a year, to chant dirges for the daughter of Jephtha". ]
